


as brightness, into brightness

by ssstrychnine



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Post-Canon, Post-Mockingjay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-25
Updated: 2015-11-25
Packaged: 2018-05-03 06:52:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5280956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssstrychnine/pseuds/ssstrychnine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>where effie trinket fits post-movie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	as brightness, into brightness

He kisses her like he has done it a thousand times. Casually, like he knows the way she will taste, her powdered cheek, her lipstick mouth. It is lilac, the lipstick, and he kisses her so lightly the colour doesn’t budge and she thinks that maybe he knew to do that. Maybe he’d thought about doing that. She purses her lips against the feeling. She presses her palms together, she twists one of her rings around her finger, she smoothes down her dress. And then she turns back to an empty mansion and a city in pieces. 

It does not take her long to realise there is no longer a place for her in the Capitol. They had allowed her silk and lace and jewels when she was turning Katniss into the Mockingjay, but it doesn’t work in what the city is now. Still, like a held breath, like a skipped heartbeat, and always a moment from collapse. She retreats to her apartment, which is relatively unscathed, and she paints her face and sews new dresses and wears her ice shard eyelashes, but only because there is no one there to see her, and only because it make her feel less like she’s disappearing

Her money runs out quickly. It had never been something she thought about, because there’d never been a reason to care, because she _had it_. But the rebellion had turned coin to dirt and it doesn’t occur to Effie to curb her spending. She has caviar and macarons delivered without knowing what it costs her. Until, suddenly and all at once, she can’t afford it. She starts to sell her silk and her lace and her jewels. Small things that she can bear to part with. She thinks of District 12 often, but that is not her place either, and she leaves Katniss and Peeta and Haymitch to their grief, and their anger.

It is Annie Cresta who pulls her out of it. Pregnant Annie Cresta with sad eyes and long, pale fingers. Effie had altered one of Katniss’s dresses for her, for her wedding to Finnick. Effie had given her a ring. She is the first person Effie has seen in more than five months that she hasn’t paid.

“I have nothing... I have nothing to wear,” is the first thing Annie says, her hand fluttering nervously at her hair, her eyes closing a beat too long, laughter in the back of her throat. “I’m bigger now and you’re so good with a needle and...” 

Effie lets her in. There is clothing all over her apartment, in piles, draped over furniture, and it’s dark, lit with candles, 

“For the atmosphere,” she says, her voice high and brittle, gesturing at the flickering chandelier. It seems an important lie to tell.

“Oh,” says Annie, though she looks uncertain. 

Effie clears a sofa of clothing and they sit down together. Effie is wearing a navy dress with gold buttons and her face is bare. She cannot stop touching it, swiping her fingers under her eyes, her cheekbones, tapping at her dry lips. Annie is plainer still, but she doesn’t wear it with such discomfort. 

“How are you?” she asks, when the silence stretches out too long.

“Oh no,” says Effie, an automatic response. “How are _you_ , sweet thing?”

“Pregnant,” says Annie, smiling a little. “Terrified.”

“Your child is going to be a treasure,” says Effie, with absolute certainty.

“I know, but it’s hard... now.” 

Effie plucks at the fabric of her skirt, then holds her hands carefully still in her lap. 

“What can I do for you, Annie?” 

“I just... I’ve nothing to wear, and I thought, perhaps, if you weren’t too busy...”

“Of course,” says Effie. “One shouldn’t start the journey to motherhood in rags.” 

They talk for awhile, about nothing, about what life in the Districts, in Panem, is turning into. Something new and tentative and warm. Something Effie has not allowed herself to be a part of. They talk about people they both know, letters Annie has sent to Peeta and Katniss. Effie does not ask about Haymitch and Annie doesn’t mention him. When they run out of pleasantries Effie shows Annie fabrics and she smiles and does her best to pick colours in the dim light. Effie sketches dress shapes on a page torn from a book she has never read. Effie takes measurements with a gold measuring tape. Effie refuses payment and hugs her when she leaves and stands in the doorway for a long time after she’s gone.

It is not self pity. It is something deeper than that, something that comes with spending the majority of your life in willful ignorance. Something like guilt and disgust and terror and bone-deep sadness. Effie wears masks well and she is not prepared to be cut so loose and stripped so bare. She lives in her dark apartment, only using electricity for warm water and her sewing machine, and she bites her nails to the quick and then paints them dove grey. 

Annie comes back for her dresses and brings a friend with her. A girl with hair like ink and a smile like a sunrise. She asks for a dress to wear to a wedding and Effie smiles and this time she does take the money she is offered. Very slowly she stops cutting up her own outfits to make dresses for these customers and she starts buying fabric instead. She stops using candles for light. She stops selling costume jewellery and wigs. She stops eating apples and bread and little else. She leaves her house. 

Her guilt doesn’t disappear and she is glad for it, she sees what the Capitol did in the rubble that still dominates some city blocks, in the memorial built out of President Snow’s mansion. In the other memorial, for the Capitol children killed by President Coin. She does not wear much jewellery anymore, though her outfits regain their extravagance. She wears a mockingjay pin sometimes, though she does not speak of the war. She thinks of Haymitch often, and over a year after the rebellion ends, she goes to District 12. 

It is not ashes. The people are rebuilding and Victor’s Village is still the most whole but it is not empty like it once was. There are families now, sharing the houses and building gardens and living lives. They stare at Effie, in seafoam green and silver, but it is not with the fear they used to. It is curiosity and amusement and Effie teeters passed the children and they scream with laughter and she finds she doesn’t mind.

Haymitch is not in his house. Two families live there and they point Effie towards the more broken parts of the District. She trips on gravel getting there, scraping her palms and putting runs in her stockings. She is disheveled and irritated already when she comes across Haymitch on the front step of a tiny house. Haymitch with a bottle in hand. Haymitch scowling at her like thunder.

“You didn’t stay sober long, I see,” she says primly, brushing off her palms. 

“The nightmares don’t stop just cos we won, sweetheart,” Haymitch snaps back, taking a very deliberate drink.

“And your manners are still atrocious.” 

He doesn’t reply and the silence pulls at all of Effie’s uncertainty. She will leave. She will visit Katniss and Peeta briefly and then she will not come back. The thought catches her breath in her throat and she purses her lips to hide her discomfort. She drags the kiss curl of her hair through her fingers, her real hair, like a halo of gold, and she resists the urge to tug on it til it hurts. She should have worn a wig. She should not have come.

“This place is...” she starts, looking everywhere but Haymitch. “It’s... it’s looking so... “

“Beneath you, right?” Haymitch barks out a laugh. “You can say it, Eff, you’ve never held back before.”

“I was going to say... peaceful,” Effie murmurs. “When I was an escort it was... cold. I can’t imagine it was peaceful after the... after the bombings. But almost peaceful now.” 

Haymitch is silent again. He runs his finger around the rim of the bottle then knocks the base against the concrete step. There is something in the line of his shoulders that Effie does not think will ever leave him. Something wound tight and wary and wounded. She wonders what sort of touch it might take to pull the tension from him. She wonders if she could do it. She brushes off one of the steps with the scarf she has tied around her neck, and she sits down next to him, folding her skirt carefully around her. Haymitch doesn’t move.

“Your trousers need hemming,” she tells him.

“Your... those... are ripped,” he mutters, gesturing at her knees.

“Stockings, Haymitch.”

“Essential knowledge, I’m sure.” 

“Well, they are held up by a garter belt, which makes them stockings. They might have been tights.” 

“Fascinating,” he says, but he is smiling, just a little, and Effie thinks perhaps she will stay awhile.

She stays in District 12 for a week, sleeping in the spare room of Katniss and Peeta’s home. She spends most of that time with Haymitch, convincing him to grow flowers in the garden behind his home, convincing him that he ought to eat a solid meal once in awhile, convincing him that alcohol cannot be a substitute for water. He argues with her constantly but there is something in it that feels comfortable, and warm, like running in from a storm. Breathless and relieved.

But she does go back to the Capitol. She has clients who need dresses and lilies that need watering. She had run out of clothing anyway. And though it does not feel like home anymore, but she is comfortable there, in a way. 

She visits District 12 frequently, ostensibly to see Katniss and Peeta, but really she spends most of her time with Haymitch. She brings him shirts, and the trousers that she stole from him, freshly hemmed. She picks the flowers in his garden when they first bloom and puts them in empty bottles, and spreads them around his house. He grumbles, but he wears the shirts and he bears the flowers. 

On one visit she arrives to find he has adopted a flock of fledgling geese and they stare at her with murder in their eyes. 

“I think Katniss killed their mother,” he says, roughing up his hair, wrinkling his nose. “I like eggs.”

“They’re hideous,” she declares, refusing to step into the back garden.

“I’m sure they think the same about you,” laughs Haymitch. 

Surprisingly, Haymitch dotes on the geese. He digs them a shallow pond and a roosting shelter, he gives them free range of the garden, he talks to them when he thinks that no one is listening. Effie, for her part, secretly gives them names like Vicious Beast and Feathered Menace, and they hiss at her when she tries to pick flowers, and she hisses back. 

“Birds should not have teeth,” she tells Haymitch one night, when the geese are roosting, and he laughs, and he hugs her to him with one arm, a clumsy sort of gesture, but a sweet one, and she is stunned into silence.

They do not talk about the kiss, in snow and ruins, and Effie has long convinced herself that it was a declaration of friendship, nothing more. She thinks that while she would like it to happen again, Haymitch feels differently, and she knows not to push it. She still sleeps at Katniss’s house. 

Sometimes she brings her work to District 12, so she can stay longer, and the District women start asking for dresses too. It thrills her in a way she has not felt in a long time, to be making something beautiful for them, to be putting smiles on faces instead of fear, and anger. They are not like the Capitol dresses, they are muted florals or soft greys or blush pinks, but they are beautiful in a way that is new to Effie, a way that she had not noticed before. Like much of District 12. 

Occasionally she drinks with Haymitch. She does not drink _like_ Haymitch, but she will have wine in his only clean glass, while he drinks from a bottle. Invariably it ends with her swaying and sleepy eyed, leaning against the arm of his battered couch, while he laughs softly and takes the glass from her. 

“I dream about calling your name in the Games,” she tells him on one of these nights. “Like I did for the Quarter Quell. I dream about killing you myself.”

“The first time you came here was the day the Reaping would have been,” he tells her. 

“I know,” she sighs.

He sits down next to her, he slumps into the space that she thinks of as _his_. A hollow in the couch cushion, worn out upholstery and the smell of the grass he feeds the geese.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t think I’ve ever said it, but I am.” 

Haymitch is silent for a long time. She wants to cover her face with her hands so she cannot see his scorn but she doesn’t let herself. He will tell her he hates her, he has only ever _endured_ her, and she will leave and never come back. Her eyes are hot and her skin feels like it will break under a touch. She will make him tell her what she deserves.

“You ought to hate me,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Yeah, I should,” he says, rolling his eyes skyward, settling back in his seat. “But you make it hard.” 

“I make it _easy_.”

“What have you been calling the geese? Vicious.... Beak?”

“Beast,” she corrects, looking away so he can’t see her blush. 

“And you can tell them apart?” 

“Of course I can, Haymitch.”

“It’s _that_ ,” he says, a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. “You named my geese and I can’t hate you.” 

Effie smiles, almost comfortable again, almost secure in the knowledge that she is there because he wants her to be. Perhaps it will always be almost. Perhaps that is enough. She sighs, she swallows the last mouthful of wine in her glass, she settles back next to him. 

“I ought to go,” she murmurs, smothering a yawn. “I need to leave tomorrow, the new lace is being delivered in a few days.” 

“Stay,” says Haymitch, his voice gruff.

“I can’t, I’ve a hundred things that need finishing.”

“No, leave tomorrow if you have to, but stay here. Tonight.” 

“What will the children think?” she asks, shutting her eyes so she cannot see him, so she can pretend she isn’t smiling.

“The geese or Katniss and Peeta?” 

“Both,” she smiles. “All of them.” 

When she opens her eyes he is looking at her. Grey-eyed Haymitch who had been a charming tribute a million years ago, when she was just a girl. Grey-eyed Haymitch in a shirt she made for him. Grey-eyed Haymitch with goose down tangled in his hair. His expression is one she has seen every night before she falls asleep; the way he looked before he kissed her in the snow. Like he was figuring out something that he’d been stuck on for a very long time. She is not surprised when he kisses her again. Long and soft and slow. His hands are at her collarbone, her jaw, in her hair, and hers are pressed flat against his chest, flush to his heartbeat. 

When he pulls away she touches the backs of her fingers to her warm cheeks, and she laughs, and she folds her hands in her lap. Dove grey fingernails, bitten to the quick. 

“Stay,” he says again, rough voiced and slow and insistent.

“To sleep,” she says, still smiling.

“To sleep,” he agrees. 

They both know it will take a long time. It took the better part of two years to get to a second kiss. Effie has time. She has silk and lace and jewels. She has goose feathers and sunflowers. And Katniss and Peeta and Haymitch. District 12 is not hers, not yet, but she thinks, perhaps, one day, it will be.

**Author's Note:**

> the title is from a book by the poet sarah manguso. i saw the movie last night and i just. i'm happy for these kids!! i think perhaps i've got the seasons wrong, and the geography, but oh well. it's not important. also i am @oneangryshot on tumblr! say hi!


End file.
